Stranger In a Strange Land
by Lirillith
Summary: FF4: Rydia awakens in the Feymarch and meets Asura for the first time.


Rydia had never thought to fear water. As the adults were talking, their voices low and serious, she'd run down the shore to kick at the waves, lingering past the second time Edward called her until Cecil did so. On the ship, she was amazed at the emptiness all around her, not afraid; it was simply like nothing she'd seen before. But when the storm hit, the wind whipped her hair around her face, the water hit her like a giant's punch, and the deck slid away beneath her feet. There was nothing solid near her, not under her feet or in her hands, and when she opened her mouth to scream salt water filled it. She heard Edward shout her name then, but there was water everywhere, all around her. Her eyes squeezed shut, she floated, weightless and unmoored, for a moment, then her head broke the water and she tasted air. Her eyes were open, but the ship was just a hazy shape. When had it started raining?

And then she saw another shape, a dragon, a monster, a sea serpent, a maw the size of a house opening up and coming at her, and she screamed and kept screaming.

* * *

When she woke, to solid dryness - a bed, sheets, clean cloth under her hands - she sat up, coughing, trying to clear phantom water from her lungs, gasping for air. A hand touched her shoulder softly, and she started back from it instinctively.

"It's all right," a woman's voice said, a gentle voice that reminded her of her mother, of Rosa. "You're safe here."

"Where am I?" Rydia rubbed her eyes. The room seemed simple enough, stone walls and floors, but there were writings on the walls in script she couldn't read that glowed faintly. And the woman with the gentle voice had three faces. The one turned toward her was a pale blue, its expression calm and kind; the other two were on either side, like ears, and looked a lot less calm. The hand that returned to the woman's lap was also pale blue.

"This is the Feymarch," the woman said. "And I am Asura. My consort, Leviathan, brought you here."

"_Oh._" She might have been too young for more than the most basic lessons, but the name of the Feymarch and its king and queen had been in the very first one. "Why?" she asked, her voice much smaller.

"That's not important right now," Asura said. "I know this place is unfamiliar to you, but no one will harm you here."

"Really?" She knew that the summoner's tools were usually symbolic, and that if you needed to fight an Eidolon it was a test of your strength, not a real fight to the death. But wasn't she a trespasser in their world? Would they really be okay with one of the summoners who interfered in their lives walking around? And shouldn't she go back and help Cecil?

"Really," Asura said, with a smile. One of her pale blue hands reached out to stroke Rydia's hair, and Rydia found herself smiling in response. "For now, you should rest," Asura continued. "Your passage here was not easy."

No. No, it wasn't. Her throat hurt, and she felt sore all over, even though she could feel the traces of healing. "Can I, um, have a glass of water?" she asked, still in the same small voice. She was asking the Queen of the Eidolons for a glass of water, but maybe it was better than asking for a bedtime story.

"Of course." But she didn't get up; she moved one of her other pairs of arms, the gray one, in a gesture, and an attendant Eidolon came in with a glass of water a few moments later. The attendant - a woman with a head like a lion - handed the glass to Rydia, then exited the room, silent and almost seeming to glide. Rydia drank gratefully, gulping down almost half the glass before she was done. She held it uncertainly, and Asura extended one blue hand for it.

"Okay," Rydia said. "I'll sleep some more."

"A moment," Asura said, then rose, and reached behind Rydia to plump her pillow. Rydia could feel the warmth of Asura's arm behind her, close but not quite touching her, and remembered the last time anyone had fluffed her pillow; her mother, a few months back, when she was sick with a cold.

The sob felt like a balloon in her chest, a bomb, getting bigger and bigger until it exploded in a wail. Asura sat on the edge of her bed, wrapping one pair of arms around her, then a second. Rydia leaned against her side and bawled in a way she hadn't let herself since her mother had died; her hands knotted in Asura's skirt and she wept until she had hiccups.

"You might like the rest of that water now," Asura said, which pulled a damp, tearful gigle out of Rydia, and she smiled and hiccuped and drank the rest of the water Asura had been holding all this time. Asura took the empty glass from her, and stood up, then bent over to kiss Rydia on the forehead. "You will be all right," Asura said. "For now, rest. I will be back soon."

"You promise?" Her mother had been taken away, and Rosa. The Feymarch should be safe, but it was strange, and Rydia didn't want to wake up alone.

"I promise."


End file.
